taxatty

If your not "small" skip the AA bulkhead 787-8 Economy seats, they're narrower due the tray tables in the seat armrests and not that comfortable. PE seats are much better, especially the bulkhead row because those seats have footrests. The downsides for those PE bulkhead seats are that the IFE screen holders fold down between them and need to be kept down during takeoff and landing, and they are closer to the lavatories.

A couple of days after we booked a February, 2026 RT Cape Town Muse Cruise--that entire period now shows totally Waitlist. Does anyone know why? Change of itinerary? Drydock? Charters? That would be a very long time for the last two. No word from Silversea to us on this.

Doing this trip takes some serious testicular fortitude.

That wins for the most nonsensical flight arrangements since Silversea routed us on AA from Miami to Dallas to Santiago instead of the nonstop Miami to Santiago AA flight. We complained, they switched it.

Don't forget that you can generally do D2D without flights or airport transfers but with the hotel.

All passenger complaints will now be directed to this officer for response.

I agree with Wes on Marieke Egan--she was an excellent Expedition Leader on our Silversea Kimberley cruise last summer.

A connection to the port with Metrorail, Brightline and Tri-Rail is supposedly in process, but probably will take 2 or 3 years from now to be operational.

You'll love the USB drive content--a video of the Polar Plungers should be included, for better (to win a bet) or worse (no Olympic diving medals awarded or deserved).

Trust me, you don't want to! Of the many excellent threads on this board for Antarctica trips, IMHO, this has been the best and most informative one--thank you so much. Hopefully, South Georgia will be accessible when we go there on the Wind early next year.

Since there appear to be 8 daily nonstop AA MCO-MIA flights in May, as long as it's not the last flight of the day, you would hopefully be able to get on a later flight if you miss yours. There is also a reasonable chance that the price will go down between now and then to enable you to take the far quicker and more convenient nonstop AA CLT-MIA flight.

You can also avoid this problem by booking a one-way trip using credit card-related points or miles. The sign-on bonus alone for a number of the possible airline-specific or transferable points cards is sometimes enough for 2 one-way TA tickets, or at least one, with lots of time for sufficient spending to get ticket #2. Do be careful about using British Airways (or to a lesser-extent, Iberia) for this due to the possible high related fees.

To see how fast you can get yourself out of the water once you're in. After many visits over the years to the freezing water at Sliding Rock in Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, the polar plunge was no big deal. It was lots of fun, especially with the warming bourbon afterward.

We also had a great J (business) class experience on the Qantas SYD-DFW flight. The seat, food and service were at least comparable to or better than our F class experience in a number of ways on our AA LAX-SYD flight. On that flight, AA J to F wasn't an expensive upgrade, in fact, some like AA J better than AA F because the AA J seat provides more privacy. The main differences with Qantas J were that the AA F seat is wider, swivels so you can work on a small desk while facing the window, and AA F is a much smaller 8 seat cabin with its own lavatories. We've also flown AA between the US and AKL on 787s--economy was very cramped with narrow seats, PE was much better, and J was quite good.

The currently live thread indicates no landings.

We brought the ski pants and were very happy we did. But we're from Miami...😄

Looking forward to your next post. The MIA Hotel has been awful for many years--there are several better choices within 10 minutes of MIA--sorry you had to endure it.

If you dress on an expedition cruise the way you are in your picture, you will be dressed nicer than 75% of your fellow passengers. Antarctica on the Cloud in the MDR was mostly collared long-sleeved shirts, sweaters, basic blouses and any long pants of your choosing. It was too cold for anything less.

One additional item--she should download movies, books, games, etc. to keep herself amused in the evenings on an expedition cruise--there's generally not a lot of entertainment after dinner.

Did you catch anyone from the ship sneaking into the KFC? That would be the ultimate negative review of Silversea's food.

Best tarts ever--we overdosed on these in a few Lisbon bakeries.

In general, as rough seas in that part of the world are a definite possibility, the rule of thumb is to be as low and amidships as possible.

If a visit to South Georgia is allowed then but it's restricted to viewing from zodiacs, we'll probably cancel our trip there on the Wind in 2015--viewing birds and other animals from offshore is not the same as through an actual landing based upon our experience on our Cloud Antarctica trip, and it would be heartbreaking to see dead and dying wildlife.

Given the current breakout of avian flu in South Georgia, this may be a moot issue if it becomes closed to visitors for an extended period. We're not happy about this as we're supposed to be on the Wind going there early in 2025. If Silversea removes it as a port stop, as we've already been to Antarctica and the Falkland Islands, we'll need to find a different experience.

We had much better tours in many of those same ports by creating an 8 person group in our CC roll call to book private tours by van--far preferable to a bus. We saw a lot more than the ship tours and went at our own pace. We did make the same mistake of going in the summer and enduring the oppressive heat and humidity, especially in Singapore, but almost everything there does have A/C.